Monday, October 23, 2017

Smashed this out over the weekend. The staining and what all is a bit coarse and rushed but that's just because I was testing the pattern and not the stain. I'm planning on testing it as my next campaign journal but the pattern worked so well I just might start making them for the shop first. As soon as I have an opening in my schedule I'll be making a production version to list in the shop.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

These were two separate orders that just happened to come in around the same time. They both used original designs. The brown one was provided by the client and the green/silver design was something I drew up.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

These two maps went together as a set. Aside from being the first maps to use Med Brown instead of Saddle Tan the Texas map is the largest I've made to date: 16x16.

The smaller map is of St. Augustine, FL and a little more typical of most of my maps. I think the Medium Brown works with the water tinting better than the Saddle Tan so that's something I'll probably carry over on future maps.

The scale of the Texas map made it pretty much impossible to do the usual ink transfer. I wound up printing the design across four sheets of paper and manually tracing it onto the leather. The client decided they'd like to add a few other elements after I'd finished most of the carving and that I had to just kind of eyeball directly onto the leather. It only worked at all because the design is relatively simple. I'm not sure how well I replicated the vintage map they were trying copy (the image was pretty blurry and I couldn't find other maps showing the same data). And I'm frustrated with the text stamps. They were all flush before stamping but because the stamps themselves are manufactured inconsistently the letters aren't all in line. That said, I'm pretty happy with how the texturing and colors turned out.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

As someone who frequently sells handmade gifts I sure appreciate when clients put their holiday orders in well in advance. These dice cups are meant to be Xmas gifts but I won't have to worry about getting them out the door in the midst of the annual holiday crush.

The Flash cup required a new design that I based off some old, classic Flash lineart. I added the lightning and used two different kinds of stain to try and make some contrast with the red background. It's still red on red but there's just enough contrast to make the outline stick out.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

When I posted the condition tokens for sale I'd always meant to expand them, particularly with some spell-specific tokens. I'd still like to do that someday but there's ~80 spells in 5e that a token of some sort could be used for and there's all sorts of challenges in sorting that out. In the meantime, I've been continuing to experiment with our weekly games and noted that we've been having a lot of use out of some generic buff/debuff tokens. There isn't lots of buff stacking in 5e so using the same token for Bless and Shield of Faith hasn't been all that confusing. In lieu of developing an all new line of tokens (for now) I've just added these new tokens to the set on the store.

Monday, October 2, 2017

This was the first toolbox to use lambskin for the shell and I'm really happy with how it came out. These toolboxes are pretty popular around the holidays and I've already received another order or two for more.